The injuries of race car drivers during races are well known in the art. Many types of safety apparatus have been designed to protect the race car driver so that injuries to the race car driver are minimized during crashes. For example, seat belt straps extending across the shoulders, and waist of the race car driver are currently in use to protect the race car driver from injury. In addition, race car seats are molded to be disposed about the trunk of the race car driver when the race car driver assumes a seated position to prevent lateral movement of the race car driver.
During a frontal impact of the race car with another race car, the prior art seat belt straps, and molded seats may function to sufficiently protect the race car driver.
However, if the race car hits a wall or other substantially immoveable object the race car driver can be ejected from the seat with such force that the seat belts overlying the race car driver's shoulder blades can break the race car driver's collar bones and/or rib cage. During a side impact, the race car driver is thrown toward or away from the race car's door. The lateral force placed on the race car driver during a side impact can cause the seat belts and/or the molded car seat to break the race car driver's shoulder blades, clavicles and/or collar bones.
To protect themselves against such injuries, race car drivers have worn football pads, such as rib pads, knee pads, shoulder pads and hip pads. In addition, such race car drivers have also worn bull riding vests to protect themselves. The comfort of the protective devices worn by the race car driver is an extremely important consideration because of the heat build up within a race car. The football pads and the bull riding vest have typically not functioned adequately to protect the race car driver from injury, and also may make the race car driver uncomfortable during the race. For example, the bull riding vest did not cover and protect the shoulder blades entirely thereby leading to injury in the event there is a car crash. In addition, such football pads and bull riding vests were generally inflexible and retained heat thereby preventing the race car driver from sitting comfortably in the seat of the race car. Moreover, the bull riding vest had a lower portion which extended over the tail bone of the individual thereby making the race car driver even more uncomfortable.
Due to the uncomfortable nature of the football pads and bull riding vest, some race car drivers elected not to wear these protective devices even though these devices did afford some protection. Thus, there is a need for a vest which more adequately protects the race car driver while also being more comfortable for the race car driver to wear during races. It is to such a novel vest that the present invention is directed.